Abstract

During the organization of this conference, a colleague commented on the way writers of fiction have the same status within the programme as academics. She said she had not been to a conference where this had occurred before. For me, this is vital because written Aboriginal histories are being produced in the form of fiction or literature, and further, since the arbitrary nature of the boundaries between fiction/literature and academic writings can be more easily appreciated, Aboriginal histories or life stories have not been given the status of history in the official, nation building sense, though this is changing. The most outstanding example of this for me is Living Black, a collection of histories edited in 1977 by Kevin Gilbert. This book won the Australian Literature Award (I am not suggesting that Living Black was not deserving of such an award). Because of the relationship of literature to fiction its status in portraying history is undermined.